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Changes in economics research from 1998 to 2019: 🔸️ "Pre-analysis plans, power analyses accompanying null results, and corrections for multiple hypothesis testing remain uncommon." 🔸️ "Articles now report more tables and statistical tests." doi.org/10.1016/j.eu... #Economics #MetaSci #Methodology

Abstract
We map the evolution of economics research from 1998 to 2019 to assess progress and identify remaining challenges. Using text mining of 30,675 full-text articles and an in-depth analysis of 578,132 statistical tests from 3746 articles across a broad range of journals, we document changes in research practices over time. We highlight the influence of the credibility revolution and the open science movement. Awareness of reproducibility has increased modestly, largely driven by journal adoption of data and code sharing policies. At the same time, reliance on non-public data has grown, especially among authors at top-five universities, posing new challenges for transparency. Sample sizes have increased substantially, while reported effect sizes have declined, consistent with reduced exaggeration and potentially more policy-relevant estimates. Econometric methods and causal inference practices have become more sophisticated, and articles now report more tables and statistical tests. However, pre-analysis plans, power analyses accompanying null results, and corrections for multiple hypothesis testing remain uncommon. Article length has remained stable or declined slightly, and authors from top-five universities continue to represent a large and stable share of publications in top journals. Our findings provide a baseline for tracking future developments and for guiding efforts to further strengthen the credibility and transparency of economics research.

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"Our findings reveal that there are clear limits to what Republican partisans of color are willing to endorse ideologically, even in a highly polarized era." By Emily Ortiz, @rbalhambra21.bsky.social, @efrenpolipsy.bsky.social et al. doi.org/10.1017/rep.... #SocialPsyc polisky #PolPsych

Abstract
Non-trivial shares of people of color (PoC) have long identified as Republicans, and many of them helped cement Donald Trump’s 2024 re-election. How durable was this shift toward the political right among some PoC? We test two claims in this brief research note. First, consistent with polarization literature, we claim that partisanship primed three conservative postures among Republican PoC during the 2024 campaign: authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and system justification. Second, aligning with work on expressive survey responses, we argue that these postures faded significantly once Trump’s agenda produced visibly harmful consequences for PoC (e.g., deportation raids; weakened civil rights). Leveraging a three-wave panel of Black, Latino, and Asian adults (N = 3,626), our pre-registered analyses indicate Republican partisanship in June 2024 heightened authoritarianism, social dominance, and system justification among Black, Latino, and Asian adults in December 2024. These patterns were fleeting, with partisanship’s impact on these postures withering by July 2025. We find scattered evidence that these postures intensified PoC’s Republican partisanship during this period, implying our results reflect campaign effects rather than an unerring endorsement of these right-wing inclinations among Republican PoC.

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"The lack of consensus on persuasion’s ethical boundaries underscores the need for further investigation and deeper reflection within the scientific community." doi.org/10.36850/b36... #MetaSci #STS #PhilSci #Epistemology

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Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

"If persuasive devices cannot be clearly distinguished from QRPs, their use may undermine the integrity of scientific communication." New work by @rritabajraktari.bsky.social and Marcus Munafò doi.org/10.36850/b36...

Abstract
Scientific communication is often assumed to prioritize objectivity, yet persuasive strategies may subtly distort research interpretation. While the spread of errors in research is often attributed to methodological or statistical biases (Świątkowski & Dompnier, 2017), rhetorical strategies are less often considered questionable research practices, although they can be (Corneille et al., 2023). This study empirically investigates how authors and external readers perceive persuasiveness across different sections of scientific articles (Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion). Using a mixed-methods approach, we surveyed 15 authors of selected articles and 42 external researchers, asking them to rate paragraphs on persuasiveness and informativeness. No significant differences emerged between authors' and readers' perceptions (two-tailed t-tests), perhaps suggesting a shared awareness of persuasive strategies. However, significant section-based differences were observed: Abstracts and Introductions were rated as more persuasive than Methods, whereas Discussions were perceived as more persuasive than Results and Methods sections (p < .05). Participants also evaluated whether specific devices (e.g., spin, selective reporting, overgeneralization) constituted attempts to persuade. Six of the nine devices were identified as persuasive by over 80% of respondents (“Yes” or “Sometimes”). These findings, along with the overlap between persuasive devices and questionable research practices, raise questions about their ethical implications for research reliability and transparency.

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"Psychologists often see themselves as in the business of simply producing 'effects'. But what is scientifically at stake if a certain effect exists or does not exist? This is often not made clear." New preprint by Zoltan Dienes: doi.org/10.31234/osf...

Abstract Severe theory testing is greatly facilitated by concisely laying bare before the study is run the essence of the scientific process. (See for example the Study Design Template of Peer Community In Registered Reports.) Testing a theory involves testing a nexus of claims each of which plays an inferential role in deciding whether the evidence counts for or against a substantial theory. Each claim should be explicitly stated in a way that shows what is at stake in testing that claim. The substantial theory is the most general claim that could have evidence count against it - and ideally should be explanatory (having an internal structure that is not free to vary). Psychologists have not been very good at explicitly stating what claim is actually at scientific stake. It should be made clear what theory is being tested by each stated prediction. Predictions should be statistically modelled with a specified test that allows evidence both for or against the prediction. The study should be shown to have a size that could show the theory wrong. How the test will be used to draw conclusions for or against each theory should be specified. This whole structure should be stated so concisely and systematically there is no verbiage to hide behind - the skeleton of the scientific process laid naked so that its integrity can be easily evaluated. The structure can be debated, then the inferential chain nailed down as data collection commences. Researchers can change their mind later - but in full transparency of what is happening.

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“How do we determine whether some piece of evidence is relevant? As I’ll discuss, existing philosophical work on RTE does not provide an explicit, clear answer.” New work by Feraz Azhar (2026): doi.org/10.1086/743555 #PhilSci

In assessing support for a hypothesis, we must decide what evidence to include. The requirement of total evidence (RTE) says that we ought to include our total relevant evidence. But what fixes relevance? Existing philosophical work on RTE does not explicitly and clearly address this question; nor does this work develop RTE in a way that is sensitive to, and thus readily applicable to, the practice of modern-day science. In this article, I address these challenges. In particular, I introduce and critically analyse a version of RTE that makes precise two conditions for evidence to count as ‘relevant’—namely, ‘admissibility’ and ‘non-redundancy’—in such a way that renders RTE readily applicable to scientific models understood from a practical, modern viewpoint. I dub this viewpoint the ‘effective turn’: wherein scientific models are analysed in light of their limited regimes of applicability. I also provide a contrast with implementations of RTE in more general settings, where model-relative guardrails may be absent and the problem of what fixes relevance is correspondingly more thorny.

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Glad to see my 4-item Perceived Awareness of the Research Hypothesis (PARH) scale got a cite. figshare.com/articles/jou... #SocialPsyc #Methodology

The PARH Scale

The PARH scale is a 4-item self-report measure that is usually presented near the end of a research study under the heading “Your thoughts about the research.” The PARH items and instructions are as follows:

Please indicate how much you agree or disagree with each of the following statements:

1. I knew what the researchers were investigating in this research.

2. I wasn’t sure what the researchers were trying to demonstrate in this research.

3. I had a good idea about what the hypotheses were in this research.

4. I was unclear about exactly what the researchers were aiming to prove in this research.

Participants respond to these items on a 7-point
Likert-type scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7). Items 2 and 4 are reverse scored during coding, and the item scores are then averaged to form a single overall PARH score. Higher PARH scores indicate that participants believe that they are more aware of the research hypotheses.

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New review of methods to address demand characteristics by @ocorneille.bsky.social, Chloé Bernard, and @peterlush.bsky.social doi.org/10.3758/s134...

Demand artifacts stem from participants’ beliefs about treatment effects and motivations to respond in accordance with these beliefs. These artifacts typically build on subtle cues that exert extraneous influences unbeknownst to researchers, through processes that are not part of their stated theory. Demand artifacts threaten the internal and external validity of studies, and they have been supported across a wide range of psychological domains (e.g., clinical, cognitive, and social psychology, psychology of perception) and beyond (e.g., consumer research, experimental economics, psychosomatic medicine, neurosciences). This article reviews prominent methods used to address them. Our discussion is structured around Corneille and Lush's (2023) framework of demand effects, which distinguishes between participants’ hypothesis formation, motivation, and implementation strategies. We conclude this review by discussing three fundamental questions of broad interest: when should we care about demand artifacts, what is the best approach for addressing them, and how can we usefully build on demand artifacts?

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Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

From @lisafeldmanbarrett.com and @jtheriault.bsky.social’s (2025) chapter in the Handbook of Social Psychology: “What's Real? A Philosophy of Science for Social Psychology.” doi.org/10.70400/BPQ... #SocialPsyc #PhilSci

All scientists are philosophers. That is, they hold fundamental assumptions about the nature of reality and how best to develop “true” (i.e., justified) knowledge about it. The way a scientist goes about building justifi ed knowledge reveals what they take reality to be. Their assumptions guide their scientific practices and products — their choices of topics to study, their formulation and testing of hypotheses, and ultimately, the inferences they offer as claims of knowledge. Other scientists, guided by their own philosophical assumptions, turn those claims into bona-fide knowledge by using them and citing them. Or not.

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“Having a 50% replication rate in social and behavioural studies is much better than it has been made to sound. The results from the SCORE project should be considered a reassuring sign of good science prevailing.” New article by @mframos.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/jrss... #stats #MetaSci

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Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Alexandra Karakas and @tuadam.bsky.social introduce the new book "Scientific Mistakes and Mistaken Science: Malfunction, Error, Failure" link.springer.com/book/10.1007... #PhilSci #HistSci #AcademicScky 🧪

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Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

From a chapter in the new book "Scientific Mistakes and Mistaken Science: Malfunction, Error, Failure" edited by Alexandra Karakas and @tuadam.bsky.social link.springer.com/book/10.1007... #PhilSci #HistSci #AcademicSky

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Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (2026) considers "unanticipated ignorance" in science. "It is an ignorance that we did not know about, one that we were not able to guess unless experimentation confronted us with it." doi.org/10.1007/978-...

Abstract My paper will explore the function of ignorance and error in the scientific research process. Scientific knowledge, as a particular form among many other forms of knowledge, can even be characterized by its attitude toward ignorance and error. The ground-laying epistemic feature of research consists in gaining knowledge about aspects of the world of which the actual knowledge is either scarce or absent altogether. “Specified ignorance,” as discussed by Robert Merton, is a state of affairs where the black spot of ignorance can be pinpointed. But research is also characterized by a kind of ignorance that we can address as “unspecified,” or “nonanticipated,” that is, by ignoring what one does not know. This often implies that what counts as knowledge today will reveal itself tomorrow as an error of the past. I will especially focus on the latter form of ignorance and present a few historical examples from the life sciences of the twentieth century.

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Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Scientific reasoning aims to convince other scientists in an epistemic community using a local ecology of acceptable reasons. Excellent work by @heintz-c.bsky.social and Stefaan Blancke

The unreasonable effectiveness of reasoning in the sciences

Highpoints
• Reasoning evolved for persuading others and for not being wrongly persuaded by
them, rather than for discovering new truths about the world.
• Science succeeds because ordinary reasoning is exercised within a specific social
and cultural setting.
• That setting comprises an ecology of reasons, an arrangement for distributing
evaluation, and an incentive structure.
• Six reasons explain why scientific reasoning is warranted and creative.

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Thanks very much for taking the time to do this Berna. It's good to hear some diverse views in this area. I particularly liked your last point about interdisciplinarity and “cross-pollination.” So important for an area like metascience.

(10) What question should I have asked you, and what’s your answer?

Q: In your research program, what has benefited you most?

A: Reading outside of my area (such as it is) and collaborating with colleagues from diverse backgrounds and disciplines. In the last decade, I have read anything I found interesting, setting all pragmatic considerations and disciplinary boundaries aside. I find myself reading books and papers in statistics, mathematics, philosophy of science, history of science, science and technology studies, psychology, sociology, computer science, economics, political science — you name it. Qualitative, quantitative, empirical, theoretical… I was also lucky enough to interact and collaborate with scholars from many fields. I cannot imagine doing the work of the past decade without such cross-pollination. Allowing myself to feel professionally homeless (without a proper base discipline) has set me free to do the kind of work that compels and excites me, and that I find internally rewarding.

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"Notably, 'null results' was among the least frequently selected reasons overall and was not selected at the submission or peer-review stages."

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“Lishner (2022) provides a detailed typology of reasons for studies remaining unpublished.”

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Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

“Contrary to the common assumption that journals reject null results, we found that most projects halt during early data analysis or presentation stages.” New work by @bartekmacka.bsky.social et al. Open Access: doi.org/10.1007/s112...

The “file drawer problem” – where study results remain unpublished – distorts scientific evidence and wastes resources, yet its impact on experimental philosophy has remained unexplored. We conducted the first dedicated survey of experimental philosophers to investigate the prevalence, causes, and potential solutions to research attrition in this field. Contrary to the common assumption that journals reject null results, we found that most projects halt during early data analysis or presentation stages. The primary drivers for this attrition are resource constraints and competing priorities rather than statistical non-significance or rejection during peer review. Although researchers are highly aware of the file drawer problem, they view “not publishing in a timely manner” as a relatively acceptable practice compared to other questionable research practices. While the adoption of open-science tools like preprints is growing, few researchers utilize micropublications to share result-independent findings. Participants cited the “extra effort” required to share results as a primary barrier. We conclude that the file drawer in experimental philosophy is often populated by “homeless” data that lack the coherent narrative required for traditional publication. To address this, we recommend adopting low-friction dissemination formats, such as standardized templates and brief reports.

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“Theory and Model Building in Psychology” New book edited by @fabianhutmacher.bsky.social and Alexander Wendt, with chapters by @ufeest.bsky.social, @devezer.bsky.social, @mieronen.bsky.social, and @bringmannlaura.bsky.social. link.springer.com/content/pdf/...

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Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Agree! I find David Lishner's (2022) typology of reasons for non-publication quite useful: doi.org/10.1177/1745...

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Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

This disconnect between the *game* of science (discard falsified theories) and the *aim* of science (reach truer theories) is explained by Musgrave and Pigden (2026) in their recently updated Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry: plato.stanford.edu/entries/laka...

There is now a disconnect between the *game* of science and the *aim* of science. The *game* of science consists in putting forward falsifiable, risky and problem-solving conjectures and sticking with the unrefuted and the well-corroborated ones. But the *aim* of science consists in developing true or truth-like theories about a largely mind-independent world. And Popper has given us no reason to suppose that by playing the game we are likely to achieve the aim. After all, a theory can be falsifiable, unfalsified, problem-solving and well-corroborated without being true.

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Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Bruno Borge delves into Lakatos’ unpublished work: “The archival materials reveal a thinker who saw the direction clearly but did not complete the journey.” philsci-archive.pitt.edu/30626/

Abstract
There is a well-known tension between fallibilism and epistemological optimism in Lakatos's philosophy. The prevailing view is that Lakatos's aspiration to connect the growth of knowledge with an increase in verisimilitude was either illusory or unfulfilled. In this paper, I argue that Lakatos's overlooked position on the metaphysics and epistemology of laws of nature provides a framework for addressing this tension. Drawing on the published text of Necessity, Kneale and Popper (1978) and on unpublished material from the Imre Lakatos Collection at the London School of Economics—most notably the manuscript God, Angels, and the Triviality of Truth—I reconstruct Lakatos's views on laws and ascribe to him a form of Moderate Nomological Realism. This position holds that genuine laws express natural necessity in statements of infinite length, that natural, mathematical, and logical necessity form a continuum, and that our epistemic access to laws is always partial and fallible. The unpublished manuscript, which I argue is a preparatory text for the published reply to Kneale, develops this framework at considerably greater length than the published version. I show that this position contains the resources for addressing the tension between fallibilism and epistemological optimism.

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Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

"Do commitments to meta-pragmatism and meta-pluralism generate a vicious reflexivity? Might we also need to be meta-meta-pragmatists and meta-meta-pluralists?" By Matthew Maxwell, Aja Watkins, and @andrewzeppa.bsky.social #PhilSci doi.org/10.1007/s110...

What meta-pragmatism and meta-pluralism suggest, then, are yet further meta-methodological questions (see Fábregas-Tejeda forthcoming): By which methods and according to which standards should philosophers of science evaluate the adequacy of our own methods for our own various aims? Do commitments to meta-pragmatism and meta-pluralism generate a vicious reflexivity? Might we also need to be meta-meta-pragmatists and meta-meta-pluralists? Will methodological pluralism lead to an indefinite expansion of what counts as philosophy of science, potentially requiring philosophers of science to acquire an impossible breadth of expertise to meet our goals (a concern raised by Lydia Patton)? As the editors note, none of these questions or concerns are obviously insurmountable, but further exploration of these and other issues would be welcome in future work.

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Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Four new articles on the palliative effect of ideology by Joaquín Bahamondes, @shargou.bsky.social, Jaime Napier, and @suppes.bsky.social Open Access: doi.org/10.3389/frsp... #SocialPsyc

Like a soothing balm that offers temporary relief, but leaves the underlying condition untouched, legitimizing ideologies possess a remarkable capacity to alleviate psychological discomfort derived from inequality without addressing its fundamental sources. According to system justification theory (Jost and Banaji, 1994; Jost, 2020), widely shared beliefs that make the status quo (and its attendant degree of inequality) seem fair and legitimate help satisfy epistemic (uncertainty reduction), existential (threat reduction), and relational (shared reality and interpersonal harmony) needs. Thus, system-justifying beliefs could offer solace from the negative psychological consequences of inequality by shifting the blame away from its systemic root causes (Jost and Hunyady, 2003).
The palliative effect of ideology has accumulated substantial empirical support (e.g., Vargas-Salfate et al., 2024). However, several questions remained unanswered. For instance, to what extent this effect generalizes across developmental stages, social groups, and domains of inequality? Through which mechanisms does it operate? Are system justifying beliefs always palliative, or are there certain conditions where they will actually be detrimental to wellbeing? The four contributions to this Research Topic, spanning a systematic review of evidence on youth, two empirical investigations of marginalized groups in the Americas, and a cross-cultural analysis of 22 countries, engage directly with these questions. Together, they refine our understanding of when and how system-justifying ideologies confer palliative effects by documenting the moderating and mediating mechanisms that shape their complex psychological consequences.

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Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Discursive and rhetorical approaches to understanding system justification. New work by @alex-hunt-psych.bsky.social Stephen Gibson, and @marcalexander.bsky.social Open Access: doi.org/10.1111/spc3... #SocialPsyc #Methodology #PoliSky #PolPsych

ABSTRACT
System justification theory (SJT) explores the psychological and ideological motives of those supporting social and political structures of inequality. Given that SJT is generally explored through a framework that emphasises motivated social cognition, there is comparatively limited emphasis on the discursive and rhetorical dimension of system justification. We demonstrate how system justification is enacted in discourse by using a discursive-rhetorical psychological framework to analyse UK Parliamentary debates discussing ‘Brexit’—the UK's withdrawal from the European Union. The discursive-rhetorical psychological perspective locates system justification within argumentative settings in which politicians present themselves as democratic preservers of the status quo to defend or undermine contrasting Brexit positions. Speakers construct different versions of the status quo, indicating that the existing state of affairs is not an object with a predetermined definition. Our findings suggest that system justification in discourse should be explored in terms of how people actively defend or oppose systems themselves.

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Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Multiverse Analyses “[Only 6/152 (3.9%)] studies discussed whether their competing specifications were defensible or principled (distinguishing between equivalent, non-equivalent, or uncertain specifications) in the sense of Del Giudice & Gangestad (2021) [screenshot below]” doi.org/10.1177/2515...

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"Similarly, Jennifer Lee ('Who Receives Scientific Deference?') examines what happens when scholarly ideas enter public discourse." doi.org/10.1177/0891...

Abstract
Drawing on feminist metascience and Ridgeway’s “framed by gender” theory, I ask: How are men and women social scientists constructed in public media? I conduct a comparative analysis of media portrayals of eight public sociologists (four women–men pairs): Arlie Hochschild–Barry Glassner, Juliet Schor–Richard Florida, Angela Duckworth–Daniel Kahneman, and Michelle Alexander–William Julius Wilson. Findings reveal that women’s work is frequently de-legitimized by trivializing their contributions and emphasizing political biases, whereas men’s work is framed as empirical, rigorous, and legitimate, even when flawed. Women are often denied what I call “scientific deference” á la Goffman. These asymmetries underscore that scientific meritocracy and objectivity are not intrinsic properties of science but are instead culturally constructed ideals. By demonstrating how media narratives reflect and sustain gendered hierarchies of epistemic authority, this study extends feminist critiques of science beyond STEM and highlights the role of public discourse in shaping who counts as a legitimate

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"Likewise, in 'Sharing Knowledge Openly,' @mollymking.bsky.social and Jeffrey Lockhart examine open access and repository participation not as straightforward indicators of scholarly virtue, but as practices embedded in unequal institutional and interpersonal conditions." osf.io/preprints/so...

Abstract
Open science is an increasingly important movement in contemporary social science. Many funders have begun to mandate open practices, newer journals like Socius are open access, and preprint servers have increased readership for paywalled articles. Feminist scholars have written about the values and pitfalls of open research. In this paper, we put those ideas in conversation with each other and empirical data on open access publishing to develop a feminist framework for thinking about feminist knowledge, data, publishing, and audience. Using a survey of 19,462 social scientists, linked with their entire Web of Science publication history from 2000 to 2023 and all papers posted to SocArXiv, we replicate past work showing that articles by women are less likely to be some types of open access. We extend these findings to scholars of color and feminist scholarship, while also demonstrating a few surprising null results for all three groups.

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"Jina Lee’s article (“Claiming Novelty, Claiming Authority”) shows that scientific authority is performed through routine rhetorical practices." doi.org/10.1177/0891...

Abstract
How does gender shape who can successfully claim authority in science, and how does this vary across disciplines? Drawing upon theories of doing gender and feminist epistemologies, I examine a key mechanism through which scientific authority is established: novelty claims, defined as rhetorical statements that frame research as novel, distinct from actual novelty. These claims operate as gendered professional practices linking gender to scientific impact. Through analysis of 106,125 papers from SciSciNet and Microsoft Academic Graph databases, I find that novelty claims mediate gender gaps in citations differently across disciplines. In STEM fields, women first and last authors make fewer novelty claims than men, and this is associated with fewer citations. In humanities and social sciences, novelty claims remain positively associated with citations, but there are no gender differences in their use or in citations. These patterns persist after controlling for women’s representation in each field, indicating that gender hierarchy gets reproduced through deeper epistemic power relations rather than demographic imbalance.

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